Mittuniversitetet

Applying a revised concept of historical media events: The case of an airship landing 1919.

Historical media events challenge the original conceptualization of ”media event” by Dayan & Katz (1992), which focused on broadcasted synchronized events. This focus limited the application of the concept to the post war era and to particular types of events. In a recent issue of Media, Culture & Society, commemorating the 25 year anniversary of the publication of Dayan & Katz’ original book, Espen Ytreberg (2017) proposes a revised framework for analysing historical media events, in which he combines the English language tradition established by Dayan & Katz with German approaches (Hamm 1996) that propose much broader definitions.

The current paper presents a test of the analytical value of Ytrebergs’ reconceptualization against the case of an airship landing in Stockholm 1919 and discusses the framework in relation to other historical applications of the media event concept (Wilke 2010, Ytreberg 2014, Harvard 2018). The airship landing displays many of the properties specified by Ytreberg as typical for a historical media event: It was pre-planned to insure large crowds at the landing spot and extensive media coverage, it made extensive use of synchronization media technologies such as the telegraph, and it also displayed strong tendencies of mediatisation, almost to the point of constituting a “pseudo-event”.

The analysis reveals that the approach advocated by Ytreberg, despite its broader scope, serves as a useful categorization tool, specifying the properties separating historical “media events” from historical events covered by the media in general. However, the analysis also reveals a weakness in the model. While the categorization of different properties of mediatised historical events helps organize empirical observations, it presents a weaker framework for providing explanations. A case in point is strategic actor intent. Organising large-scale synchronized events with the intent of obtaining real-time media coverage and public participation, has historically often been made with specific strategic communicative intentions.

The planned media coverage of the airship visit was intended to rouse interest in the upcoming establishment of a commercial airship transport route. The paper discusses the dimension of strategic actor intent as an indicator of the limitations in the explanatory value of the model, against the case of the airship landing as well as some other illustrative examples.

Through the application and critical discussion of the revised model of historical media events, the paper contributes to theoretical development and our understanding of how historically developing media formats and structures have changed the preconditions for media involvement in large-scale public events over time.